Prevalence and Risk Factors for Mortality among COVID-19 Patients Hospitalized in Karachi City Pakistan

Abstract

Background: Corona virus disease (Covid -19) is the most contagious form of the disease of present time. Therefore, the risk factors which proliferate the spread and hinders the better outcome should be identified. There is gross difference in the spread and outcome of covid 19 in different region of the world. There is need to identify these factors in different communities of the globe. Material and method: This is a retrospective observational cohort study of Covid -19 patients admitted during the study period. Institutional and ethical review board permission was taken prior to the study. Univariate and multivariate binary logistic regression was run and odds ratio with 95% confidence intervals were obtained. P value of ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Outcome variables were recovery and death. Results: There were 840 patients admitted between the study duration, while 704 (83.8%) were included in our study. There were 491(69.7%) males and 213(30.3%) females. The mean age of the population was 54.6±15.5 years. All continuous variables were categorized according to binary outcome (recovered and death) of patients. In Logistic regression analysis we found that patients in age group of 51-65 years died 2.5 time more than patients of age ≤ 50 years. Similarly, the patients within age group of > 65 died 4.5 times higher than ≤ 50 years of age (p<0.001). Male patients died 1.5 times more than females. Among all comorbid conditions HTN had significant effect on death, they died 1.5 times more than normotensive patients. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, the age groups had same significant effect on death when adjusted with other parameters, while effect of gender vanished. Similarly, the effect of HTN was also abolished when other factors were included in analysis. Conclusion: We concluded that there is an urgent need of reevaluation of the traditional risk factors associated with viral epidemic and understanding the changing paradigm of epidemiology emerging out from this epidemic in both developed and developing counties. There is need of more data from developing world to elucidate the risk factors.